brick

a block of clay hardened by drying in the sun or burning in a kiln, and used for building, paving, etc.: traditionally, in the U.S., a rectangle 2.25 × 3.75 × 8 inches (5.7 × 9.5 × 20.3 cm), red, brown, or yellow in color.

2.

such blocks collectively.

3.

the material of which such blocks are made.

4.

any block or bar having a similar size and shape:

a gold brick; an ice-cream brick.

5.

the length of a brick as a measure of thickness, as of a wall:

one and a half bricks thick.

6.

Informal. an admirably good or generous person.

7.

Informal. an electronic device that has become completely nonfunctional.

verb (used with object)

8.

to pave, line, wall, fill, or build with brick.

9.

Informal. to cause (an electronic device) to become completely nonfunctional:

I bricked my phone while doing the upgrade.

adjective

10.

made of, constructed with, or resembling bricks.

Idioms

11.

drop a brick, to make a social gaffe or blunder, especially an indiscreet remark.

12.

hit the bricks,

to walk the streets, especially as an unemployed or homeless person.

to go on strike:

With contract talks stalled, workers are threatening to hit the bricks.

Also, take to the bricks.

13.

make bricks without straw,

to plan or act on a false premise or unrealistic basis.

to create something that will not last:

To form governments without the consent of the people is to make bricks without straw.

early 15c., from Old French briche "brick," probably from a Germanic source akin to Middle Dutch bricke "a tile," literally "a broken piece," from the verbal root of break (v.). Meaning "a good, honest fellow" is from 1840, probably on notion of squareness (e.g. fair and square) though most extended senses of brick (and square) applied to persons in English are not meant to be complimentary. Brick wall in the figurative sense of "impenetrable barrier" is from 1886.

[first sense said to be a clever student version of Aristotle's phrase tetragonos aner, ''four-sided man, foursquare man,'' used in the Nichomachean Ethics to describe a person of public merit whose praise might appear on a square monument of tribute]

The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D.Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers.Cite This Source